Living Twice
by Danny Barefoot
Summary: Before Hige met Kiba, before he met Jagura, who was he? The skins peel away...preanime, runs off eps 22 to 26, spoilers, including end of series.
1. Chapter 1

_Note: For most of this story Hige appears in human form as a fifteen year old boy, slightly older than Toboe. Takes place about a year (say, 4 adult wolf years) before the Anime. Wolf's Rain, and whatever names you recognise, belong to the copyright holders; not making any money whatsoever. _

* * *

**_The trail across the alley–it was his own, the only one to scent. Nothing else but rubbish, filth, and a half-eaten sausage two streets back. The cub stumbled, tried to rise, snapped at one of the circling, hungry rats, and sank. It was the trail home–but his own scent had nothing of home in it, now. How many blocks had it been? He was breathing too slow._ _He heard the rats; skittering away together._ _The cub lifted his eyes. _**

_Scarred, grey; eyes like fists the cub reflexively avoided. Wind blew in his tiny face–there was another cub on it, female, old as him. Fur dirty enough to belong in the place where they were._

_They were nothing like him. But now, he wasn't alone._

The two wolves sat on the station bench. The one who appeared as a boy of ten kept sneaking glances at the train making ready to pull out.

"Quit it," instructed the other, a hulking grey wolf, sour-faced at the smell of engines, "Watch the exit." The pup, Reni, hung his head. Pause;

"Papa, where's Hige? Should he–?"

"The runt's going to be there. Because if one of his stunts doesn't work I beat him within an inch and throw him out. And he wouldn't stop me. You understand? Every wolf got his pride." Reni didn't look like he wanted to understand. His father patted him absently. "It'll be alright. Guard three from the end, Hige met him last month in a bar. The runt gets how humans work." His voice barely held an edge. "Ah..." In the station's din, both wolves heard the faintest whine quite clearly–the only human who heard was the somewhat rat-like guard, third from the end.

After three times, the soldier felt sure the noise was from inside the car behind him, and quickly unshipped the lock, as another whine sounded, at the level of his feet. He glanced under the train. A wolf, bounty $2000 live, semi-conscious on the rails, with foam on its lips. An inspection party was half-way down the train.

As the wolves watched, the soldier whispered to another on the next car, who suddenly misidentified a railway worker as a wanted thief. As the commotion sucked in everyone else on the platform–including Reni and his father– the rat-faced soldier hid the brown bundle of wolf flesh among some crates, and darted back to relock the car door. But by that time, Reni had slipped into the car, and out with a couple of sacks, unoticed in the commotion.

The crowd was just breaking up, when something behind the crates started to twist and moan; a number of soldiers helped a young girl with dark blonde hair and an eyepatch to her feet.

"Where am I–no, no, you! He was going to–"

The rat-faced soldier briefly protested against an increasing swell of voices, before being knocked to the rails by an apparent acquaintance of the girl, a slightly chubby young boy in a yellow hoodie, who appeared from nowhere to lead her away. Reni and Chief left ten minutes later, with the sacks of food, leaving the theft to be discovered in another city.

-0-

"Enjoy it; for the next month nothing's gonna be safe but trashcans." Hige met Martel's comment with an innocent look, as he rapidly disposed of a chicken.

"Should've known better than to injure a human," The Alpha wolf grated, as he picked at a joint, "Or steal those useless things." He indicated a cauliflower Reni was happily rolling around.

The pack was sprawled near the razorwire edging the roof of a disused apartment block. The town was one of the bigger ones, built in a close pattern of squares; Hige could pick out the cigarette-lights of stray humans in the streets. Smell every dog, crapping, farting, mating. But always, with one long sniff, he could catch the forest, and the snow. He owed his nose a lot.

"I grabbed what I could grab; guessed we could sell the vegetables on. And injuring– well, no matter what I was born to, I _like _the forest way of doing things, Chief."

"Just don't pretend you understand it, runt." Hige made an extravagant show of deference; Chief growled under his breath.

"Do that voice trick again, Hige. Pleazzze."

"What trick would that be?" Hige's voice inquired from behind the chimneystacks, while Martel rolled her eyes.

"Don't encourage him. Next we'll hear about the time he got humans to bet on our fights with their dogs…"

"Dogs fighting _us_?"

"They do what they're told. Short definition." Chief supplied.

"You always won, though, Papa?" Chief smiled, as if in need of practice; "Great! I thought maybe Hige made you lose on purpose, so the humans all lost their money!"

Reni stopped grinning, in the gaping silence that ensued.

"The idea–was raised." Chief was looking indirectly at Hige, in the way that made him _work_ to escape locking eyes. "I, ah, guess we all learn stuff. I'm pretty embarrassed about it." Chief smiled quietly.

"And that," Hige complained to Martel as they curled sleeplessly together. "Is why we're never having pups. The stupidest thing–"

"You don't like the pup, then act it." Martel whispered, "Anyway, you're gonna leave, before it comes to that. Start your own pack, find a girl with two good eyes."

"Don't wolves mate for life? Stop talking like a depressive." Hige rolled over, as Martel clicked her fangs in front of his face. He rolled back and started licking at her ears.

"Ah. I just need a deer to chase down, or something."

"Not if I see it first." Both wolves caught the fried-air scent of an airship somewhere in the darkened sky, and flattened their bodies. Martel turned over under Hige, and rubbed her head over his flank. "We'll find a deer on the way to Jagara's city."

"Idiot," She rubbed harder. "Think about it in the morning…" Hige shifted to look her in the eye.

"We're going there. Not tomorrow, but soon."

"No. Pride is something, revenge is–"

"There were no airships last year. They want to exterminate us–won't even have to sweat over it, so long as we don't know what they can do. You see? If pride killed us, we'd have thrown it away ages ago. Pride is why we survived; why we're gonna keep on…hey, hadn't finished…"

"Shut up. Mmmm..." There was an annoyed growl from the pile of overcoat that consisted of Chief and Reni. Hige and Martel ignored it.

"Don't talk about Reni's mother, or my parents, when you ask him about leaving. Say something like just then…"

"Come on, you know I only talk that way in the heat of the moment–"

"Idiot. There's a part you hide, but its always there."


	2. Chapter 2

Hige and Reni sat on the edge of a flyover. The white humans stretchered down two bodies from the goods lift with three black-clad guards. Reni watched his own legs swing like dead meat.

"This ain't…?"

"Na; nobody's fault. Patrol saw 'em, all they could do was get the doors shut and head on up…"

"Hige, the humans'll watch the lift. How –"

"Shuttup, and we might find out."

In the month since they'd travelled to Jagara's city, the wolves had slipping between levels using the forgotten lift that Reni had found to avoid patrols. Stealing and scavenging was easy in the sprawl, and the bucolic commuters of the inner city were no threat. though the glass eyes there made Hige itch between his shoulder-blades.

"Okay; there should be another elevator somewhere. Meet in an hour by that drinking fountain, I'll go that way." Reni stared up, "Understand? Move-it." Hige walked quietly away, shoulders a little hunched. Reni sprinted in the other direction.

The cub found a couple of broken lifts, and finally slouched back the way he had come. He passed a human family rushing indoors, their faces afraid. Not of him.

Reni looked back down the street. Empty, save for rubbish. No scent. He gave a sick little laugh, and darted down an alley.

Nothing happened–Reni kept running. He hopped up to a second floor window ledge, and looked back. Nobody. He eased the window open, and moved quickly up the stairs inside.

The stun-blast clipped his nose, as he crept onto the roof. Reni tumbled back down the stairs, smelt a human coming up to him, and threw himself through the window.

Before he could rise, the hunter had flown down a drainpipe like an ape. The cub saw a silver flash, then the snarl filled his ears, and the human had leapt back onto the wall to swing his knife down at the raging brown _thing_ behind him. Reni found a leg and pulled, the snarl went on, and it was over fast.

Hige spat out little red pieces. He was staring into nothing harder than Reni was staring at him, and couldn't easily speak.

"Wolf-hunters get into the inner city. Took care of the one with the stun-gun before I dropped by, so that's a pass tag each. Good job."

"You planned this. That I'd be spotted…" The glass in Reni's side bit when he moved.

"It's your father, pup. And those hunters will be missed, so let's only stop for a wash."

–0–

Hige went first through the barrier to the inner city; Reni stayed by the mouth of the strange glass tunnel they'd ascended on, hopping from paw to paw. Hige grinned mildly when the barrier buzzed an alert. The tunnel-draught was carrying all his scents to Reni, who slowly shut his eyes. A barrier guard tapped at a machine in his hand.

"Sorry, sir, some kind of a fault. If you'd wait–"

"Yeah, yeah, no uniform. For the kind of mission–"

"Yes, Sir! Apologies, but we need to disable the force-field to let you through." Hige laughed cynically–possibly he should know that there _wasn't_ a force-field–and squatted down next to Reni.

"We haven't fooled them." He sniffed, "Tunnel's clear for another minute, then game over."

"You want to save Martel, right?"

A suited man passed through the barrier. Hige ground his teeth; then Reni looked up to see him smile.

"Tch. They'll be another way." He got up, and sauntered towards the tunnel. Reni stayed where he was.

Hige stopped and sniffed. Looked at the tunnel back to the sprawl, slowly clawed at his head. He was still facing the tunnel, walking away, when Martel appeared on the other side of the barrier.

She howled. The barrier guards saw a blonde fifteen year old with her arm round an unconscious soldier's neck become a brown wolf, with rage-filled, disbelieving eyes.

"Guns _down_."

"And _that_, pup," Hige muttered into his chest, "Is what comes of going for strong-minded women." He raised his head; a guard was moving toward him slowly. He could see a soldier-black speck moving over a distant tower.

"You human, stop! All of you, guns down!"

Hige spread his hands, "What a choice. They face you, or Jagara, and I really don't–"

"SHUT UP, SHUT–" Hige jerked his head, and Martel threw the soldier she held at the glass wall. The same instant it shattered under a bullet, seeking her, stopped by her hostage's head.

In one bound Hige had Reni, threw him back down the tunnel. A leap over the nearest guard, two strikes, and he had Martel's hand, they were running. To a hundred-fifty well-lit, dead straight metres–five armed humans rising behind them. Martel was limping; there was blood on her leg–Hige grabbed at her too slow; her hand was gone.

"MARTEL!"

Another sniper bullet struck near Hige's face. He looked into the tunnel, didn't move. Martel's head rose from an open throat, she struck one gun aside, and leapt with a growl like a scream. Finally, Hige sprinted for her; and the barrier threw him back with a smell of dirty fire. Martel looked up from her heap of bodies; Hige looked back–a guard he had knocked aside was at the tunnel mouth, raising his shaking SMG.

The wolf sank to the floor, panting. He heard Martel hit the energy-field, heard her howl, and howl. Fresh soldiers were stepping up behind her, stun guns ready.

"HIGE!"

"Go on, shoot. What're those bullets for?" Hige stared at the guard, who looked ready to collapse.

The wolf's eyes moved to the black glass circle above the door. He could feel it watching–where he was, what he was. It was a long time till they shut off the energy-field and came for him–for all of it, the eye was watching.

–0–

"I could murder some lamb. Yesterday I wanted beef, but today…"

"Stop joking around, runt." Chief's voice made mist of the bars between them. Hige could face the wall, and still feel his eyes.

There was no moonlight; they could've been there up to a month. Separate cells. The only other prisoner had been dragged out within a week; they subsided on a kind of meat gruel sprayed through hoses. Reni had given an expurgated version of Hige's actions when they'd been thrown in. Over the next days, the whole story seeped out of the cub, as if he were emptying himself.

"Are we just going to die? Or anything else...?"

"Well, so far so good. Like the human who fell off the cliff."

"I told you–"

"Is Paradise a place, or where you go when you die…?" Reni interrupted. Hige and Chief displayed identical baffled looks; "Mother talked about it, sometimes. I _think_ it she said it's a place–"

"It is? Do go on!" Hige snapped. Reni put his paws over his head.

There was a wall between Hige's cell and Martel's. She hadn't yet made a sound. Hige hadn't so much as poked his nose round to sniff.

Chief got up, wincing from the bullets still in him; rested his face against the bars. Hige gazed fully into his dark, strength-stealing eyes.

"I–cannot understand how you can talk to anybody–to my son, or even _dog–_like you're talking now. Risking the pack's lives and walking out on us–can you imagine what that means to _wolves_, you lower-than-a-human piece of–?"

"Whatever I did, we're in the same mess." Hige said plainly.

"I thought I said it–stop joking around."

Hige was still looking into Chief's eyes. After a moment, his lip peeled back.

"I really don't get that one. Anybody? Reni? Martel? Please, I'm the funny guy; tell me please, _what is the joke here?_" His head began to drop; he forced it up. "I didn't walk away. I tried to come for back her. I could've run anytime, and this pack would have a hair slim chance right now; but I couldn't swallow my pride. Is that wrong, Chief?"

"Better never to ask, runt. If you did one thing, not half of both–if you really understood how wolves do anything. You could have the right to mention pride, you might not deserve to die for all this–"

"Tell me something I don't know, _gramps_."

"I just cannot get it. You can say this to a wolf that found you half-dead on a street, saw the collar on your neck–" Reni started up, mouth hung open, "–and ripped it off with his teeth, before another wolf saw it."

"Thanks.

Hige smiled all over his face, and the grey wolf gripped the bars in his jaw.

"Just for a minute there, Chief, I formed an idea you were somewhat annoyed with me. But I appreciate my mistake, now you've refrained, of your own will, from telling these marvellous wolves that it was a pink collar with 'Mr Huggles' written on it."

The following silence was broken by a noise–like a laugh that had been pickled in acid for a year. Hige rolled his head from where it had sunk on the bars, towards the noise. Martel kept making it, laughing and laughing, and maybe there was some happiness in there, under the clouds of pain and fear echoing among the empty cages and stone.

Hige threw his weight at the bars, again and again, gnawed them till blood ran. He snarled, howled, and when his breath and strength were gone, he whimpered. Martel still laughed, now in horrible jerks, and Hige listened to her, for a long time.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: Thanks to everybody who reviewed. This is the last chapter, with an epilogue coming up. Thanks to Rose of the Moon for criticising, have tried to change last chapter around a bit._

–0–

_He'd been small, hardly old enough to decipher human speech._

"…_too big, and now Daddy's out of work–"_

"_But he's my dog! He'll die if he doesn't have me, it's too mean–"_

"_We'll get another dog, sweety, that can run, and eats a bit less."_

"_Mum, I always make sure he gets enough food!"_

_The cub remembered it like a dream, indistinct and strange. The past that these barren streets were the ruins of. _

_He nosed at a garbage can–he couldn't accept yet that it was food. He'd quickly learnt to run, and his fur was thick. The pain was in the taste of home–his soft, pink-faced human that smelt of flowers, and gave him the food he would never find. The pain was the glimmer of understanding, that he was lost and betrayed, and had done nothing. And he did nothing by will now, but scratch feebly at his collar. _

–0–

They took Reni first, a few days after he stopped talking. Only Chief snapped at the guards legs; they didn't even respond with a taunt.

A few times, Hige came to the point where he could imagine asking Martel to forgive him. When just hearing her voice might've meant more than the answer–but he shifted his thoughts to hunger, and didn't speak. She called out once, when they came to her cell–it seemed miles away, and for anybody but him. He could face the wall as she went away, but he still _smelt_–she wasn't afraid?

Martel's unconscious body went past on the floor, as Hige turned around. The door clattered shut. The smell remained.

Hige looked at the floor, covered in clumps of his hair barely distinguishable from the droppings. Nightmares ended. One way, another way, any way...

"She wanted you to run." Chief told him, quite offhandedly, as the door opened days later, the final time. Hige weakly raised himself, as the guard raised his stun gun through the bars. He heard the last thing;

"Well, Runt. There are worse things than dying for nothing."

–0–

How did he remember the smell? Oh, yes, when Martel's father had died…when the soldiers found them last year, when he crawled from under the burning beam….

Hige's eyes slammed open into glare–a pattern of light around his body seemed to press him into the floor. The woman in armour and pastel robes was sat to one side, looking at him with deep apparent interest. Thought the mask he could felt her strength that made helplessness burn; he waited for her to speak.

"No rush then? Knives haven't heated up yet?" The woman gave a soft laugh behind her hand. "Get it over with." He tried to rise; it was like being buried.

The woman clapped once. A dark figure came forward with a dish; the smell of wolf-in-a-fire. As the lid came away, Hige felt invisible jaws close on his insides.

"May I ask, which one this was?"

"The grey cub, Lady Jagara." She cut away a steaming pink slice, and raised it;

"You understand; there are some foods worth any trouble to get. The taste is actually quite sour, though cooking them live improves it." She extended the meat on a fork; Hige shrank away. "So squeamish? You people eat your dead with respect."

"We… we do nothing humans order us to." This laugh could only be from a Noble.

"Pride, eh? Well. You had it when you were running, you had it when you were caught. When you aided your pack, when you let them die. When you held ideals, when you walked away from them. What does your pride mean? Will you even have pride after you die?"

One solid meal, Hige thought, and he might've had an answer. Lady Jagara waved her hand–the power restraining Hige loosened, then painfully increased.

"It activates instantly. Heel." She dismissed the light-pattern, and stalked away. Hige stumbled up, glanced at the waiting servant–the light flashed back around him before Jagara turned.

"HEEL."

Hige knew she was a Noble–honourless, outside of nature–but her eyes seized at things inside him. Parts of him couldn't survive the thought of springing at a being, a woman, who spoke like that. The wolf-meat's scent tore his nose–but he couldn't, hadn't, stopped it.

You wished yourself dead. There was no one to tear out your throat, and you crossed that line. The Noble swept out and Hige padding behind her.

–0–

For maybe a week, Hige followed Lady Jagara down scentless stone corridors. Lay in the corner of her laboratories, outside her bedchamber with two black guards above him. He grew even weaker, out of the moonlight.

She talked to him, as to a dog, on occasions. About radio. GPS. Micro-transmitters. Memory blocks. Hige was _interested _in that last one.

Why torture an animal? Hige walked slow and silent behind a human, still ate gruel from a pipe, and knew he was pathetic. So useless and far from the earth that, somehow, he couldn't choose death. Not without ever understanding what he could ever have done that was right.

He could tell Jagara didn't expect to kill him anyway, though if he never felt a human motivation again in eternity he'd be fine. There was a balcony, looking over a field of red pipes that smelt of death. Jagara would lean there sometimes, gazing beyond them...

Maybe too far a drop–but there was a window-ledge half-way down. The corridors were smooth and wide–was that necessary for the Holding Light to work? There were guards down there, but there were always guards.

Hige measured the distances. He sniffed for the wilderness smell that didn't reach this city. He thought about running, how he would live. After all that happened, to live among the forests and hills would be harder than he could do. Heading for what was in front of him; taking things as they came–he'd never been able to live another way.

And now a bowl of lean pink meat was in front of him. Maybe only in his head, there was her scent. Asking him to gulp down that sweetness, bury himself in sin, and die. Ears pushed down, legs trembling furiously, Hige looked up.

"If I don't…"

"Imagine what it felt like for the...but not you. Realise just how lucky you are."

Hige could realise. He wanted it chopped out of his brain; he wanted to be a rock.

"I'm not, I'd never be that hungry…"

"Eat it for any reason you like." Hige's throat tightened; he thought of being sick before he touched it; "Come on. She'd be so disappointed."

"Did you even ask her, or either of the others? What you want of me?"

Jagara smiled with acidic sympathy.

"I confess…as soon as you arrived, I had my eye on you alone. All your choices were set by me, and you trod the line to survival, exactly. I'm proud."

It was then Hige knew there'd be no way out. No escape she hadn't foreseen, from a life of leading wolves to the fate that he _had_ to forget. But there was luck, and life. He could go on living, find something. Without knowing, yes, without this memory of biting down, spilling meat from the bowl, without knowing that he was a dog, worthless and damned. He had to forget.

Slumped on the floor, Hige realised he was holding down Martel's flesh. Honesty–he had that, and he shut his eyes. He felt Jagara's hand;

"Number 23...you've seen past your own pride. Oh, good, good boy..."

Her voice was soft. From the cellar in his head, the silent place where he had to stay, Hige saw himself lick her hand.

–0–

"Hey, pup. You're not thinking of spending the night under _this_ tree?"

Hige sniffed in. An old female White, big but unhealthy, from a small pack. And the empty sky, the welcoming trails of the deer; the snow…Hige rolled over and whined.

"_Thought_ that stump smelt funny–bite my nose for me." The white wolf smiled briefly, and loped over to re-mark the stump, eyes fixed on Hige, as he shakily rose.

"You ain't got a pack? Only a few strays passed through months ago, talking some foolish stuff about Paradise. One of them had a collar like that."

"Heh, sure sounds foolish. This is, ah, a memento I guess, so I must be pretty foolish too."

Hige didn't bother with a proper story. He couldn't think of a reason things weren't okay. But somehow he knew for certain; no matter what he convinced the old lady of, or how he'd really found the collar, things would never change from now on.

"Something happen to you, pup?" Hige stared just long enough to stay friendly, then barked with laughter.

"I got a killer headache."

"There's a cave, few miles that way; you'll find that nicer. Take care."

"Thanks. I'll remember your scent."

The white wolf loped off, stopping to sniff the wind. She took it in like water. "No food round here, except what we can pick out of traps. We could be moving on any day."

Hige could smell another, younger, female on her fur. And the free and lovely wilderness scents, that reached everywhere he went, and had never been his. He grinned back anyway. For now it was no trouble to keep living, the only way he knew.

"I know just the place we could go..."

–0–

_The cub had smelt sausages and was pawing up at the stall, when something growled. A Doberman; metal collar, idiot, savage eyes. The wolf cub almost laughed, but it ran–there was a rat's trail, and a split-covered drain._

_The cub sniffed in the darkness, and almost vomited. Home might be only a street away, and despair had no border–then they were on his back._

_The wolf cub shot out of the drain, some minutes later. A limp black rat hung from his mouth. He was bleeding, filthy and didn't know who he was. Strange to feel a little happiness–and more right than anything he could remember. Something was his, and Hige panted, and wagged and laughed. There was always a reason for happiness._


End file.
